Zee Media Bureau/Ritesh K Srivastava
Mumbai: A sessions court is scheduled to pronounce the quantum of sentence for all convicts in connection with the gang-rape of a photojournalist at the Shakti Mills Compound here last year.
The court yesterday postponed the sentencing in the case till today and also accepted the prosecution`s appeal to add IPC section 376 (E) against the three accused, who were also convicted for gang-raping a telephone operator here.
The trio, Mohammed Salim Ansari, Vijay Mohan Jadhav and Mohammad Qasim Hafiz Shaikh alias Kasim Bengali are common convicts in both telephone operator and photojournalist gang-rape cases.
While pleading not guilty, the convicts refused to sign the copy of the charges, stating that they are yet to go through the judgement in the telephone operator case.
On March 21, the court had sentenced four convicts to life imprisonment till death for gang-raping a 19-year-old telephone operator last July in the compound of Shakti Mills.
However, the court had adjourned the photojournalist case till today to decide on the application demanding framing of additional charges on the three common convicts before pronouncing the quantum of punishment.
Special Public Prosecutor Ujjwal Nikam had filed an application seeking framing of additional charges on the three common convicts in the photojournalist gang-rape case, for repeated offence under Section 376(e) of the IPC.
Nikam said that the maximum penalty under Section 376(e) of IPC is capital punishment.
On August 22, 2013, a 23-year old photojournalist who was working as a trainee with an English magazine and was gang-raped by five youths, including a minor, when she and a male colleague had gone to the Shakti mills compound for an assignment.
